Over the past many years, most organisations looking for enterprise planning, budgeting, forecasting and reporting applications have been steered away from spreadsheets by performance management vendors.  However, since most companies opt for Microsoft Excel, it is still the preferred tool for many business users, particularly analysts.  Because it’s free, a lot of companies are reluctant to replace Excel with another tool that will...

One of the hottest fields today is data science. With so many buzzwords and terms around the fields of business and data analytics, data science, business intelligence, performance management, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, it’s possible to spend a lot of time and energy trying to work out how everything fits together. The easiest way to try and understand these overlapping fields is by envisioning business...

Many businesses inundated with data tend to tough it out with inadequate analysis tools because they are not aware of how or why business intelligence (BI) solutions can provide value. This article will cover the various ways BI and analytics in general can take your business to the next level and when the right time is to seriously consider implementing an analytics solution. There are many definitions of BI, simply put, it describes...

Budgeting and financial forecasting are critical planning and management disciplines that provide invaluable aid to business managers in the decision-making process. Most companies have business plans in varying forms of sophistication and use, that provide points of comparison to gauge success. Capital and operational funding, whether by personal capital investment, financial loans or some combination of the two is required to drive...

The number one priority with incentive compensation management (ICM) is paying commissions accurately and in a timely manner. A strong reporting strategy should be tied to this process, which can make a significant difference in terms of building employee trust and in increasing productivity. A typical example of how reporting can impact ICM processes is the Compensation and Detail Statement. When designed well, this type of report...

Recent studies show that 74% of financial managers are using spreadsheets as their primary vehicle to generate reports.  This means creating lengthy reports or presentations manually, which can yield financial documentation that is prone to human error, contains outdated information and has little or no version control.  This in turn brings key problems associated with a manual reporting process, such as information and data on...